Page 182 of Love Felt Like This

But if I’m being honest with myself, I miss the chaotic way Griffin handled Bernie.

He was terrible.

But he was endearing.

Griffin could never operate a puppet professionally. Of course not. But the clumsiness of it all, how synchronized movement was clearly a foreign concept to him, made me laugh harder than I’d laughed in years. I loved the joy on his face. Griffin always had fun playing pretend with me. I bet he would have had fun if he were here too.

The door suddenly whips open.

All three sets of eyes across the table shoot to the door behind me.

I twist around to follow, and my breath catches in my throat.

Standing in the open double doors, with a guitar strapped behind his back and an out-of-breath heaving chest, is Griffin Harvey.

“Sorry I’m late,” he chokes out.

One of the men across the table blinks. “Griffin Harvey?”

“Yes. Hi. I apologize. I mixed up the addresses.”

“We didn’t know you were presenting as well,” one of the other suits says, but the words feel muffled and distant now. My mouth is gaping open. My mind swims. I’m sinking deeper into my chair, and the world feels like it’s glug, glug, glugging underwater.

Griffin rotates his guitar around to rest across his chest. He takes the seat beside me and strums a few familiar notes.

The three executives watch him intently, and the juxtaposition of Griffin Harvey and the suits almost makes me laugh. They’re so delicately tailored, while Griffin is nothing but a mess. Wild hair, untied boots, and a wrinkled black shirt with two massive tattooed arms sprouting from the tightened sleeves hugging his biceps. He has tinges of purple under his eyes, like sleep has eluded him for days. He smells like his usual perfect leather but with a tinge of sweat.

Did he run here?

Griffin clears his throat. “I’m just here to assist when they need me.”

The woman taps the portfolio. “And they would need you because…?”

“He wrote the music,” I blurt out.

“And I’m ready to perform our songs,” Griffin says.

Our.

I look at him at the same time his eyes swivel over to me and oh, his smile. The elusive smile. Nerves zip down my spine to my feet and toes. His smile is too much. It’s not enough. I want more of him.

The suits murmur among themselves, flipping through the booklets as if searching for this new development in the agenda.

I lean closer to Griffin. “How did you—”

“I didn’t know it was this early,” he murmurs. “I had to rush here. I’m so sorry.”

“But why…? You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did. We never recorded your music.”

The corners of his lips lift higher, pushing little creases beside his brown eyes, and within seconds, I’m drowning in them once more. The perfectly woodsy color that captured me when he used to laugh at dinner. When he’d swing Ava onto his hip. The same brown eyes that stared up at me when we were in bed. When he said he was mine on a breathy sigh.

On my opposite side, Finch mutters, “Nice to have you, Griffin.”

“Happy to be here,” he says. “Ready when you two are.” Then he leans closer and whispers, “You’ve got this, okay?”

“Okay,” I breathe.